A SKULL-SMASHING hammer attack which a judge described as "little short of attempted murder" has put a young welder behind bars for eight years.

The victim still suffers regular flashbacks, sleepless nights and nightmares in which he hears the claw hammer striking his head “like a golf ball”.

Lee Robert Barlow, 24, was jailed and told he could have been in the dock for murder at Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

His attack with a claw hammer fractured the skull of Jason Bates, who was left with physical and psychological scars.

He and his partner Helen Harriman were surrounded by an abusive group as they walked home by the River Tees in Yarm.

Barlow, who had been drinking all day and taken cocaine celebrating his birthday, went up to Mr Bates and said: “I jumped off the Yarm bridge. Do you think I’m clever?”

Prosecutor Nathan Moxon said Barlow threw a beer bottle at Mr Bates, which missed, then ran home and fetched the hammer. The couple tried to continue their journey home and escape the confrontation with the gang. They ran down Silver Street, where they were surrounded again.

As Mr Bates, 31, tried to protect his partner, Barlow appeared and twice brought the hammer down on to his head, knocking him unconscious.

Miss Harriman, 26, was also knocked unconscious with minor head injuries during the fracas. The youths scattered as an ambulance arrived.

Barlow, a welder and fabricator, later turned himself in to police claiming he acted in self defence and didn’t use a weapon.

Mr Bates needed emergency surgery for a depressed skull fracture and spent almost a week in hospital. He had severe scarring to his head.

In a statement read out in court, he told of the huge impact on his life from the attack on May 21 last year.

He said: “I struggle to think at times, like my brain functioning has slowed down.”

Barlow, of Brodie Close, Ingleby Barwick, admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He had previous convictions up to 2005 for assaults, robbery, violent disorder and arson.

The judge, Recorder Neil Davey QC, told him: “The fact is that smashing a hammer into a man’s skull intending to cause him really serious bodily harm is little short of attempted murder. And indeed, had Mr Bates died, the offence you would have been guilty of would have been murder.”